What a hoot!

Get ready Bath – for a bit of a hoot. One hundred individually-decorated, large and smaller Owl sculptures are going to be ‘perched’ in and around the streets of the city this summer for a colourful three-month public art event to celebrate Bath’s Roman heritage and raise funds for local charities.

Minerva’s Owls of Bath 2018 will be the latest public art sculpture trail from the team that brought the city the enormously popular King Bladud’s Pigs and then the Lions of Bath.

The birds will ‘fly’ into the city at the end of June and later will be auctioned for charity.

Bath Newseum went to the event launch at the Roman Baths and caught up with the organiser Megan Witty.

Businesses and organisations interested in sponsoring an Owl are asked to get in touch with the organisers as soon as possible as sculpture numbers are limited.

‘Early bird’ sponsorship offers are available until March 5th. Smaller Owlets are available exclusively for schools, charities and community groups.

SouthGate Bath Shopping Centre has already been signed up as a Headline Sponsor for the event. Other early Gold Sponsors include Bat BID, MHA Monahans, Allen Ford and the Bath Per Cent Club.

Local artists are being invited to submit design ideas as soon as possible and by March 1st for the chance of being selected as one of the official Owl artists by downloading an artist pack from the website.

Owl sponsors can either choose their own artist to decorate their scul[pture, select from the portfolio of submitted designs or work with registered Minerva’s Owls artists to create their own individual design.

Chosen artists receive 20% of the auction sale price of their Owl as payment for their work, plus a contribution towards the cost of materials.

For more information or to download Sponsorship, Artist or School packs, visit the Minerva’sOwls website at  www.minervasowls.org or contact the Owl team at info@minervasowls.org or follow @OwlsofBath on Twitter.